


Entanglement

by forthemyoui



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 00:12:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10819677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthemyoui/pseuds/forthemyoui
Summary: Jeongyeon has the ability to stop time. Nayeon has the ability to travel to almost any point in recent time. They devise a method and make arrangements to see each other alone. It's a glorious sort of entanglement.





	Entanglement

**Author's Note:**

> I just had to, I'm sorry.

Nayeon travels outside for a good reason. It’s a risky move, but the elements of nature help her gauge when she’s got the right moment, or gap between moments, that is. When Nayeon jolts herself into the right moment, she knows it because she doesn’t feel a lick of wind on her face. She strolls out of the secluded area in the parking zone behind the company building, and rightly enough, there is a woman with her hand on the glass door, frame caught like a dead animal in the hands of a taxidermist. Nayeon took a lot of time getting used to this.

 

When she checks her phone to make sure she’s getting the right dance studio, she has to first wade through a bunch of pop-ups about wonky signal and the loss of data connection.  _ Hazards of stopping time, I guess _ , she thinks, and ekes past a dance trainer half-tying his shoes into the studio on the third floor.

 

Like always, Jeongyeon looks like a miracle, like the only moving doll in a doll museum. She folds her arms and cocks her head at Nayeon, as if to say ‘I’ve been waiting’.

 

“What took you so long?” Jeongyeon asks.

 

“You said not a second before or after twelve,” Nayeon holds up her phone; its screen displays the time on the world clock, right down to the milliseconds. “You’re two and a half seconds after twelve.”

 

Jeongyeon ruffles her own short hair and shrugs, looking down at her own phone. “Maybe I need to check the accuracy of the time on here.”

 

Their banter doesn’t continue for long; Nayeon kicks off her shoes and slinks down into Jeongyeon’s embrace, resting her head on Jeongyeon’s shoulder. She pushes aside the lyric homework Jeongyeon’s been catching up on and pulls Jeongyeon’s hand to her face instead. Jeongyeon hums into her hair.

 

“Will you hate me if I fall asleep here?” Nayeon murmurs into Jeongyeon’s shirt, and Jeongyeon knows she’s already falling asleep.

 

“Just go to sleep,” Jeongyeon reassures her.

 

“Thanks,” Nayeon says incoherently, smacking her lips and kissing Jeongyeon’s cheek.

 

Jeongyeon sighs as she watches her girlfriend fall asleep. Jeongyeon really can’t blame her. They’ve been so busy preparing for the comeback and Japanese debut, hurtling in and out of the dance studio, recording booth, and various filming locations, that they haven’t been getting enough sleep. Jeongyeon envies that Nayeon can freely fall asleep whenever she stops time and laments that she can’t.

 

Jeongyeon thinks back to the time they found out Jeongyeon couldn’t be asleep and maintain her control over time. She’d always suspected she couldn’t, having known the tensile strength of time pulling her from every direction and forcing her to be alert at all times in order to maintain this warp in time. That time they found out, she’d fallen asleep in Nayeon’s arms on a bench in school and woken up on the way to the principal’s office with Nayeon looking extremely flustered.

 

Jeongyeon knows she’s one of a kind, and her powers are one in a million; she hasn’t consulted a psychiatrist or a scientist on her powers, just knows that she shouldn’t tell anyone at all. To meet someone who, too, has powers, and to fall in love with that someone, however, is probably one in a gazillion. It’s just her luck she’d caught Nayeon fizzing out of the present in one of the toilets in the company building.

 

_ “I saw you,” Jeongyeon catches Nayeon’s wrist. “I saw you disappear. Where did you go?” _

 

_ “I didn’t go anywhere,” Nayeon whispers in the practice room when the panel has just conveniently missed her time slot for the dancing evaluation. _

 

_ “I saw you do it!” Jeongyeon insists. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.” _

 

_ “Okay, okay,” Nayeon grumbles. “I didn’t go to ‘someplace’. I went to ‘sometime’, meaning now. I just walked here from the toilet.” _

 

_ Jeongyeon’s eyes bug out. “Just to miss the evaluation? You’re nuts!” _

 

_ “Be quiet!” Nayeon whines, and then later interrogates Jeongyeon about her deal because Jeongyeon didn’t flip out and die upon catching Nayeon in action and that means, to any logical individual, that Jeongyeon has some secrets of her own. _

 

Jeongyeon smiles down at sleeping Nayeon and slowly unwraps Nayeon’s arms from her. She can feel the gentle heat radiating from Nayeon’s skin, probably from the further exhaustion of herself trying to get to this time. She heads to the toilet where she saw Nayeon disappear and dampens a towel.

 

Nayeon is breathing heavily when she gets back. She sponges Nayeon’s forehead for a good ten minutes, placing her chin on Nayeon’s belly. She’s a little disappointed that Nayeon doesn’t wake up, but consoles herself and gets to finishing up her studies of the new album’s lyrics.

 

Probably the best and worst part of this arrangement they’ve formed, Jeongyeon thinks as she browses the tattered lyric sheets, is that when she’s stopped time, she usually can’t tell how long they’ve been paused, and Nayeon being around makes estimation a lot more difficult. The first time they met like this was happenstance, but it was due to Nayeon’s genius that kept them going back.

 

_ “What the fuck is this,” Nayeon yells out loud the first time it happens. _

 

_ Jeongyeon hears a cry somewhere in the school hallway, and every single nightmare she’s had about someone being awake when she stops time comes back to her. It could be an alien, or a bloody raccoon that exists outside of the time-space continuum, or it could be- _

 

_ “Nayeon?” Jeongyeon asks tentatively. “Is that a chair?” _

 

_ Nayeon is holding a school chair in front of her body, inching down the corridor. She slowly lowers what she thought of as a pretty good option for a shield. _

 

_ “Oh my God, you’ve been trapped in this nightmare also,” Nayeon shriek-screams. “What is happening? Did I do something wrong when I travelled? Is this part of what I do now? This has never happened to me. I think I need to see a doctor.” _

 

_ Jeongyeon gapes at Nayeon as she rambles on and then runs a hand through her hair as she finally realises the truth of events. And wow, what a work of physics it is. She walks closer to Nayeon, and when Nayeon instinctively raises the chair higher, Jeongyeon guides her hands downwards. _

 

_ “This is not you,” Jeongyeon says, catching Nayeon’s chin and willing her to breathe. “It’s me. I think we somehow got entangled in each other’s use of power.” _

 

_ Nayeon blinks. ‘Entangled’. A lovely word. She briefly considers how lonely Jeongyeon must be in these times, how her movement right now must be the only movement Jeongyeon has ever seen in her… time here. How long has Jeongyeon been here? _

 

_ “Do you want to sit somewhere and talk?” Jeongyeon asks, holding out a hand. “I know I told you I couldn’t show you my power, but I… suppose I can now.” _

 

_ Nayeon is almost hyperventilating. “Sit somewhere and talk?” _

 

_ Jeongyeon almost laughs. “Yeah. We’ve got all the time in the world.” _

 

Jeongyeon wrings the cloth in her hands dry for the third time and replaces it on Nayeon’s forehead. She presses her knuckles against Nayeon’s neck and notes that the mild temperature has gone down some more.  _ Good _ .

 

Nayeon mumbles something in her sleep and her arms move. When she shifts, the towel on her head moves and flops down onto her face. She sputters.

 

“How long have I been asleep?” Nayeon asks, naturally moving closer to Jeongyeon, who is hunched over her work.

 

Jeongyeon strokes Nayeon’s face. “I couldn’t tell you, love.”

 

“Right.”

 

Nayeon isn’t the most hardworking of them all and she’s just about had enough of practice, so she settles for wrapping her arms around Jeongyeon’s waist, semi-sitting, and tucking her chin into Jeongyeon’s shoulder. She harmonises through humming, feeling Jeongyeon’s upper frame vibrate from her singing. She recalls getting the time-travel right intentionally for the first time; Jeongyeon had gotten so tired of waiting she had started practising their evaluation performance and singing an old song out loud.

 

Jeongyeon makes a few markings on the page, where she needs to come in as backing vocals. She looks in passing at Nayeon’s head on her shoulder. Her eyes are shut.

 

“If you were just going to fall asleep again, why burden me too,” Jeongyeon whispers jokingly.

 

Nayeon grunts. “I’m not sleeping. Also, I want company.”

 

Jeongyeon finally sets down her lyric sheets and turns to face Nayeon. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

 

“I thought it was self-evident,” Nayeon shrugs.

 

Jeongyeon adjusts the collar of her sweatshirt. It’s been so many times now, but she can’t help but feel nervous anyway.  _ Is this how Nayeon felt the first time we…? _ Jeongyeon silences her own thoughts and leans in, getting on her knees to eliminate the space between them, lyrics be damned.

 

Nayeon catches her by the cheek and guides her down to her mouth. She feels Jeongyeon’s blonde hair, which has been growing longer due to her encouragement, fall like curtains beside their faces. Her lips are a little cracked but she moistens them as their mouths meet, her tongue very quickly skating across Jeongyeon’s lips.

 

They’re very bad at balancing themselves, so they eventually end up tangled on the cold floor. Jeongyeon places a hand on the small of Nayeon’s back and drags her in closer.

 

“I was supposed to be catching up on practice,” Jeongyeon mutters.

 

“Just too bad my kisses are irresistible,” Nayeon grins proudly. “I’m too good to be put aside for practice.”

 

“What confidence,” Jeongyeon begins to joke mercilessly. “Remember the first time? ‘No, wait, don’t, just give me a moment! Just give me a moment!’ What was  _ that? _ ”

 

Nayeon almost throttles Jeongyeon. The first time they kissed it was in their dormitory, and they had successfully found for themselves a time when all the other trainees had left the building. Jeongyeon had said, after many rounds of playing video games badly, that they should really get back to reality. It’d been getting harder and harder for Jeongyeon to know where to draw the line.

 

_ Nayeon knows the gesture with which Jeongyeon ends the spell. She grabs Jeongyeon’s arm but doesn’t say a word, looking like a determined madwoman on Jeongyeon’s bed. _

 

_ “Nayeon?” _

 

_ Nayeon inhales and exhales, working herself up to it. Three times she thinks she’ll do it, but she doesn’t budge each time. She looks into Jeongyeon’s eyes, which are getting more and more frantic and worried, and tries to find a good excuse to make Jeongyeon wait just a moment, or a week, more. _

 

_ “Nayeon, do you need ice? You’re getting very red,” Jeongyeon comments, reaching to poke one of Nayeon’s cheeks. _

 

_ Just in time, Nayeon grabs Jeongyeon’s outstretched hand and puts it on the back of her neck. She nearly rushes forward to capture Jeongyeon’s lips, but is just one ounce of courage short of it. Jeongyeon studies their awkward entanglement and makes a confused expression. _

 

_ “Nayeon…?” _

 

_ “Stop talking, okay, I’m trying my best to kiss you!” _

 

_ Jeongyeon’s eyes widen. “Oh, okay. Well, I mean.” _

 

_ And Jeongyeon kisses her. Just like that. Doesn’t even hesitate. Somehow gets the courage. Side of her index finger coaxes Nayeon by the chin closer to her own face. Nayeon can feel Jeongyeon’s breath on her upper lip and just kisses her harder for it. _

 

_ When they come apart, Jeongyeon whispers something about them really having to get back to reality. And with a quick movement, they’re out of their blissful state. Unfortunately, both of them forgot that Jihyo’s frame had been paused outside the room door for the longest time, and Jihyo walks right into the room to see Nayeon clutching her own red face. _

 

_ “Is she okay?” Jihyo asks, frowning. _

 

_ “I need water,” Nayeon says gruffly and strides past Jihyo into the kitchen. _

 

“You were such an asshole,” Nayeon grumbles. “You could have given me time to calm down.”

 

“We were both starving!” Jeongyeon protests. “If we waited a while longer I might have gotten gastric issues.”

 

Nayeon rolls her eyes. “How long can we stay today?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jeongyeon yawns. “I’m a little tired.”

 

“Does the pull hurt?” Nayeon questions.

 

“Not enough to make me want to leave yet,” Jeongyeon admits, and Nayeon hums in response.

 

Outside, the cars don’t move.

 

“Nayeon?” Jeongyeon asks softly. “How many times have you revisited our times here? I’ve always wanted to ask that. Whenever you feel homesick you buzz back into a recent past event with your family.”

 

“This isn’t exactly time,” Nayeon says. “It’s between time. Sometimes I figure out the right gap in which I can see you, but I can only come here when you’re holding the fabric of time open. Once you close it, I can’t find the seam again.”

 

Jeongyeon bites her lip. “I’ve just always assumed you had a lot more of us, and a lot more options to find a way back if we ever didn’t work out in the future.”

 

Nayeon tightens her hold on Jeongyeon, feeling Jeongyeon grasp her waist tighter as well. “Nope, memories with you are something I can’t re-open. Makes our time that much more precious.”

 

Jeongyeon thinks about the first time she saw Nayeon moving when she stopped time. The only person to defy her power, the only person to find a loophole in Jeongyeon’s power. It made her feel, for the first time, like there was something she had no control over. It made her feel less lonely, for the first time.

 

“I suppose we’re each other’s exceptions,” Jeongyeon whispers.

 

“Yeah. Can we stay for a while more?”

  
“Of course.”


End file.
